Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Conjure It At Your Own Risk ❯ I Need A Meat Shield ( Chapter 4 )

“So, we’re here. I mean, you’re here. The Dragonborn! So exciting!” Recorder jiggled in the inn’s large common room. Her bosom swelled, swayed, bounced, expanded… it jiggled. And it was there on display for any man to stare at. Recorder was the best-fed person I’d met in this place. Big boobs, expensive black spiky armor that didn’t cover her upper arms, her thighs, half her breasts or her throat or heart. So not really armor so much as a sexual fetish costume. I wonder if other women wear stuff like this in Skyrim? No, wait. I don’t wonder. Even in my de-aged body and diminutive new size, I still know what sorts of things girls will do for male attention. I went to high school. I raised an eyebrow instead of comment on this directly to the addled woman with what is probably called Daddy Issues. Do I have Daddy Issues? Maybe? I talk to both Michael and Uriel, the currently de-powered Arch-Angel living with the Carpenter family to allow Michael some kind of health in his retirement. It’s… complicated. The important thing is I’d spoken to people about my experiences and received good advice on coping with them. So I may have Daddy Issues, but they are not the kind this woman clearly has.

“What is that made from? Your armor I mean,” I asked her, curious and aghast. My expression slipped out, even though I’m trying to be friendly.

“Oh? It’s made from ebony,” she said, seemingly oblivious to just how much skin it showed.

“So it’s wood? Will it burn?” I asked her, seriously worried now. This is a world with dragons. Which breathe fire, and call down meteor showers.

“Oh, Ebony is an ore, a kind of metal,” she insisted. “It’s called that because of the color.”

“Huh. Well, looks very…uh protective on you. Will you be safe wearing that?” I asked seriously.

“Probably? Maybe. I… uh? When I get scared I think I get a little bit excited. I hope you can accept me as I am. The academy sure didn’t,” she said the last under a low voice.

“Oh, I’m sure. Look, let’s join up in the morning. I want to get some food in me and some sleep. I have a long day planned tomorrow, so I suggest you do too, okay?” I asked my new party member, who insisted her name was Recorder, a fake name if ever I heard one.

I ate some of the food I’d stolen from the barrels in the tower, cooked in a pot by the fire. Convenient of them, but whatever. Stuffed full, I felt better. I baked the leftover into a pie crust I made using flour and salt, then carried those to my room for tomorrow’s meals using a wooden plate I’d looted from bandits. I really hope I can avoid food poisoning. Or dysentery. People seem to be drinking out of this river, which flowed down out of that lake west of the magic stones. No rivers flowed into that lake. The water flowed out. That mystery may go unsolved, but if I found the source of the water I was going to note it for the future.

Sleep came easily, despite all the worries, and I dreamed of home, of the Carpenter family, and Dad visiting like he used to before that whole titan business destroyed most of Chicago. Millions of people saw magic. Many of them died. The survivors would be spreading the word. Magic wouldn’t be a secret anymore, not at home.

Eventually I drifted awake to roosters crowing in the pre-dawn. I did mention that they have chickens here. Apparently, Riverwood is the original home of the Chicken that is valued most highly in all of Tamriel, the name of this world. Locals get really particular about folks harming their chickens. As a source of eggs, chickens are valuable. Nobody eats chickens. The eggs are worth more.

I put one of my pastries by the fire to warm up, and found the privy. No toilet paper. No soap. No hot and cold running water. I washed myself in the river, which stank, and wished I could invent a spell to clean the outside of me. I am a wizard. I should be able to do this. Also, modern chemistry. Wood ash soaked in water makes Lye, which added to rendered fat and soaked for a while makes soap. I could make that in a bucket with some good smelling herbs and cut it into chunks. Use that soap, sell the rest for profit. I would need a place to do all this chemistry, however. And probably some buckets as molds for the soap to harden in. It takes a week or more to finish the process.

Finishing with my washing I put my robes and soft boots back on, noting that the boots shrank to fit, some kind of enchantment. So that was a thing. A really convenient one since I didn’t even notice it the first time I wore them.

I was eating my warmed breakfast pasties when Recorder turned up. She’d managed to be fresh and clean and smelled of soap, somehow.

“Wait… that sound. Feels like… hunger. Hmm,” she said to herself, then smiled brightly and went to look for food. I may need to feed this one. This is what autism looks like from the outside, when women have it compared to men. It presents differently. Autism would also explain this fetish suit she was wearing.

I think I’m starting to recover more of my emotional range, being here in this… Skyrim. The spiky mountains. The terrible smells. The violence and primitive indifference to it. People here are tough. They don’t need counselling after getting into life or death battles against things that want to eat you, or breathe fire. Nope! They sing a song and get drunk at the nearest inn. And probably a bed partner of their preferred type.

Speaking of, I gathered up all the armor and loot from my room and carried it to the general store to sell. Lucan was the shop keeper. He was happy to see these goods and I managed to buy the Muffle spell tome and something called Soul Cloak in exchange for the armor and weapons. I added these to my Oakskin spell after clearing the Ocatos Recital, and feel like I have something useful for my own protection. The Soul Cloak will direct some of the necromantic energy of dying enemies, including animals, into something called Soul Stones, which apparently miners find often when mining ore. The spell fills soul stones when you kill something in battle. Filled stones are used for enchanting, and I’ve got plans for my enchanting.

I need to rebuild my staff, blasting rod, focus gem, and focus bracer. And then see about enchanting a long coat to protect myself from blunt and sharp attacks, and things with teeth. And claws. And that’s just the wolves. There are worse things here, between wolves and dragons many things can kill you, and will try given a chance.

“How does mining work here?” I asked the local Smith. His shop was at one end of a long house next to the river, across from the water wheel for the lumber mill.

“Most wanderers,” he explained,” carry a pickaxe with them and if they find a colored patch of rocks that might be ore, they mine there a short time. Then they take the ore to a smelter or a smith if they don’t have the skill to turn it into ingots. If they do, the ingots can be either sold to a smith for better profit or worked into armor or weapons. Gold and silver can be made into jewelry, which tends to be popular and easy to transport and sell to any merchant.”

Jewelry and armor smithing would lead to recreating my missing magical items, like my defensive bracer, which gave me a stronger shield and let me save up some of the energies for use during battle or surprise attacks. I was still in training for making better versions of my wizard’s tools, but as foci, they made magic easier, which would help me last longer in a fight, and outlasting multiple enemies seemed really important here. It is surprising just how much of a minus it is when people know about magic. It has lost its Shock and Awe factor.

There was that electronic beeping noise again.

“Eh? What do you mean I’ve been cancelled?... What? Are you kidding me? You’re not kidding. The boss is mad at YouTube so he has removed me from the Beth-net mod system? Are you joking? I’m right here. The Dovahkiin is right in front of me. We’re partied up,” she said. “Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.” There was a click.

“Hey, I have to go Miss Dresden. Sorry about this. There’s stuff going on, out of my control,” and then there was that fizzing-hum noise from the old Star Trek TV series from the 1960’s and she sort of disappeared from right in front of me in motes of golden light.

“Did you just see that?” I asked the smith. He shut his mouth to keep out the flies. Did I mention the flies? Yeah, there are flies.

“Wizards,” he muttered in disbelief and unhappiness. I blinked at this. I am still coming to terms with the fact that we aren’t a secret here. More importantly, I need a new meat-shield, I mean companion for my adventure. And Riverwood isn’t the place to find one. Between the idiot Bard and the cannibal elf carrying firewood, I just can’t be bothered. I would have to go back to Whiterun, and that will ruin my day. Hopefully no more bandits will just move into the ruins I cleared yesterday, right?

Several hours of walking down the mountain later, I wandered into the stables outside the gates of Whiterun and found a suspicious pair of bare legs. I’d noticed these suspicious legs on my first trip past these stables and opted to ignore them, because bare legs in stables are probably busy with a man they’d been rolling around together. I don’t need to see that. Not at this time of the month, anyway. But now? They were alone. On approaching I found they were attached to a filthy woman in her underwear. She stank of the puddle of vomit nearby, and I can only say that the stench of horses probably reduced the reek from her own urine. Once more, I am reassured that selling scented soap is a going to make me wealthy in this place, if I can just deal with these flying lizards.

“Oh? It’s you!” and then a stream of alcohol soaked rambling followed before she introduced herself as Sofia. Also, she was nearly naked. She had underwear, of a sort, but in a world before elastic or rubber, that means tied on with strings or leather laces. And it isn’t comfortable. I was babying my Earth underwear, but at some point it was going to get lit on fire or coated in poison and I’d have to discard it and try the local stuff, and my delicate parts are not looking forward to the experience. Would it make me tougher? Undoubtedly. Would I enjoy it? No. Not at all. And most of the clothes here were made of linen, which is sweaty anywhere it is warm.

“Sofia I need you to do something for me,” I said finally, giving her my first order.

“Just point me at the enemy and I’ll destroy him!” she agreed.

“You stink. Let’s get you a bath. And be thorough,” I insisted. She looked at the water emerging from the city and then back at me.

“Are you kidding?” she asked. She looked ready to bolt. I sighed.

“Not here. I’ll pay at one of the inns. I want you clean, not stinking of sewage,” I explained. She looked less disturbed. We entered the city and the inn at the market square was willing to heat water and provide a bath for three septims. This is a bargain, in my opinion. I paid six so I could get one too. I’d hiked for hours, so my morning clean was afternoon stink now.

“We can’t heat that much for two full baths. What can you do to help, mage?” asked Hulda, the innkeeper. She was a shrewd woman, I’ll give her that. And nobody cares that I look like a teenager, a young one. I don’t get a free pass on life just because of my age. Orphans in Whiterun were beggars. I gave a septim to one little orphan girl, who promptly gave it to the local drunk, who gave her a half-eaten loaf of bread and grilled onion, and she curled up in a warm corner to eat it, suspiciously glaring around. I let her be.

I did figure out something Hulda wanted.

An hour later I had forced Sofia to wash fully and properly in a hip bath behind the inn with water I’d heated in exchange for ice, which is valuable here at this elevation. Yes, there’s lots of ice in Skyrim, but it’s also around twenty miles away up a mountain, past wolves, bears, and sabertooth cats. Keeping meat cold if you aren’t a wizard is pretty difficult. And I am a wizard. Just wanted to be clear about that detail. In case anyone forgot. While Sofia washed I investigated the other merchants.

Arcadia made potions. She was an alchemist, from Cyrodill. She was also slightly neurotic, accusing customers of being sick with various ailments she happened to have cures for. One of THOSE sorts of women, like the kind that read a diet book, or worse a different book every month and follows the fad to its inevitable conclusion: not losing any weight, but feeling like a failure for not succeeding. It is like the opposite of fishing. Men go fishing because they MIGHT catch something, and rarely do. Or that’s what they tell their wives anyway. Women try diet books because they hate to exercise or control their disgusting urges to eat junk food until they’re round and revolting to their husbands, who then go rent the services of a prostitute capable of coaxing their seed as nature intended. I blame women for this situation. As a child with an extended lifespan I am not exactly sure what the big deal is, myself. Ii have never been fat. So I don’t know what it is like to be fat and unable to lose the weight. I do know that the feeling of sexual release is strong enough that I’m baffled why married women don’t try to acquire it every chance they get. It is like they want to destroy themselves and prevent their own happiness.

Arcadia sells potions, ingredients, recipes, and a few books on potion making for beginners. I bought a book on potion making from her, which included relative pricing. Some of them made my eyebrows go up. Potion of water breathing with regeneration of health and mana is how much? Over a thousand septims a dose? Really? So I went diving in the pool at the top of the stairs, and harvested salmon roe from the salmon (and gotten the fish for dinner), as well as Nordic barnacle, which is both fresh and salt-water, and then used the garlic I’d gotten from the interior of Helgen Keep kitchen. Arcadia let me use her alchemy table while my back dried in the fire and WHA-POW, I made potion of Waterbreathing etc. And sold them on for big sacks of gold. I also made a potion from hanging moss, lavender, and blue mountain flowers. That was another three hundred fifty septims each. And just like that I was stronger with alchemy, really strong. In the course of a few hours of work I was up over five thousand septims. Without leaving Whiterun.

Naturally, Sofia made herself a nuisance by showing up, clean, and began telling jokes about her erotic adventures. She seemed to enjoy teasing me, drinking Nord Mead one after another, though she slowed down when I used magic to chill the bottles.

“Ooh. This tastes a lot better,” she praised the result. Fine.

I got back to alchemy without the interruptions of Sofia. Eventually I was out of ingredients and could now detect all four potential magical results from each ingredient. The possible potions became obvious to me, like I was reading a list in my head. I made healing and stamina potions next, and boosted my speech skill so I could be paid more for my work. But I was out now. I need more ingredients.

I crossed over to the general store, and was greeted loudly by a man who would in the future sell used wagons with low low miles. “Everything’s for sale! Everything! If I had a sister, I’d sell her in a second!” he boasted.

“Have any mage robes?” I asked him, and found yes, and they were expensive. They were also the real thing, actual quality enchantments that worked anywhere. The best one was an Alteration specialized one and boosted mana gathering a considerable amount, double that of what I currently wore. And it was 3500 septims. Almost as much as a house. But I could make this in half an hour with more salmon roe and Nordic barnacles and three cloves of garlic. I paid him and changed into the new robe, passing my old one to Sofia, who far preferred this to the burlap rags I’d given her before.

“Is this all?” she complained.

“We’ll get you some armor at the tomb. We’ve got a quest to do. Enter a tomb and kill a bunch of zombies or mummies or ghouls, then find a stone, haul it back here, and receive a great reward. Isn’t that great?” I offered. I am regretting, slightly, having rejected the leather battle skirt offered by Balgruuf. Then again, slightly used armor seems easy to come by, and I’ve got a meat shield again.

Stinking of water from Dragonsreach pool, I then took my own bath at the inn and paid for a night after. It had been a long day. Sofia hogs the bed and flops around. She also snores.

The following morning, we made the long hike up the mountain back to Riverwood, then another hike up into the snow, with a modified warming spell running to keep me comfortable this time. Sofia shivered, but this just made her complain about her nipples, something I was trying not to think about for myself, and we neared that same tower I’d cleared three days ago. And there were new people there, again. Part of me thinks my wish that they’d stay clear had basically insured this result. No wonder Dad is such a pessimist.

An obvious thug was leaning on a tree out front, and an archer with bow in hand and arrow fitted to the string appeared, grinning. I sighed, cast the flame atronach spell, once more, setting loose my violent fire elemental between the two. It proceeded to light one bandit on fire while I gutted the other with an ice spike. It was an ugly way to die, and I worry that this kind of violence is going to be easy to adapt to. I wonder if life in Africa is like this in the conflict zones? I examined the bodies and found septims, some uneaten food, and pieces of armor that weren’t too singed. I passed them to Sofia.

“You want me to carry your worthless junk?” she complained.

“You might wear what fits,” I suggested. She grumped but I noted she put on some armored boots and bracers and a hide helmet. She still grumbled. Dropping the unwanted junk, we continued up the hill. There is probably more loot in the tower, but I could also hear the threats of a mook with a club, so I left him to bury his friends and went on my way.

A short hike later and we rounded the corner of the mountain path, the barrow coming into view. It had flying buttresses. They were mostly just holding up the stone ribs of what had probably been an impressive temple once, but was ruins now. It still looks spooky and ominous, even the second time. I spotted a lookout with a bow, who fired on us with an arrow. It missed, barely. I fired back with an ice spike, which he dodged due to seeing it coming from so far away.

Distance and ranged fighting isn’t working for me, so I charged forward. Trying to keep up with Sofia was not possible. She surged ahead in happiness. She loves to fight, obviously. I cast the flame atronach and watched it decide what to do, thankfully understanding that Sofia was an ally and did not fire on her, but did at a bowman on the temple to the right. The first watchman reappeared and Sofia chopped him down with a yell of glee. It is kind of disturbing how much she loves battle. I spotted another archer lining up a shot and fired a spike into his chest, killing him instantly. Sophia found more armor parts and handed back the robe to me while she changed into a set of studded leather armor.

“That’s better. This feels right,” she announced. I shrugged, putting away the folded robe into my satchel.

We climbed a couple sets of stone stairs to arrive at huge double doors of iron. And I do mean huge. They were around 25 feet wide arched at the center and around twelve feet tall. Meant to impress. I tugged one open by its iron ring and it moved silently. Someone had oiled it recently.

Crouching, I entered with Sofia and spotted a couple bandits near a fire beyond two huge pillars holding up the ceiling, what was left of it anyway. There was sunlight falling inside through the gaps, and big piles of stone on the floor. There were also bodies of a couple men and some rodents of unusual size. I lined up a shot with ice spike and fired it, killing the archer with surprise. The fighter turned to spot us and charged, tripping over a pot and Sofia nailed him with a spike before I could. Two more down. No more visible and no sounds of outrage. Just silence, the whistling of wind through the hole in the ceiling and echoing booms and squeaks from the building.

I approached, crossing the wide opening between the doors and the first pillar, passing a series of rodents of unusual size. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t believe in them. I’d say they were a myth, but this wasn’t ordinarily. They were there. I sliced up the tails, sensing mana in them, and examined a corpse whose feet had been bitten through, followed by his groin and the large pool of blood that had flowed out from the wound. What a horrible way to die. Sofia examined him and I found a few septims in a small leather purse he carried. More money he wouldn’t need but we certainly did. Good.

I climbed some steps to a dais where a guy who’d clearly been killed on the stone he was laid back upon, a sword under the ribs into his heart and a horrendous amount of blood down his belly and the stone. His expression was of betrayal and agony. These bandits were evil, so good riddance. Some septims as well.

I moved past the corpse toward the fire, still burning merrily with a couple bedrolls and a cookpot above it. The last two, who we’d just killed. The woman carried a bow and a dozen iron pointed arrows, the fighter had a mace and more leather fur armor. I spotted a locked chest by some rubble and used my spell to open it, finding some septims and a couple cold resistance potions, a healing potion, and a cure disease potion. It seems that my skill in alchemy lets me identify these things easily.

There was a gaping dark hole ringed with spider webs, moss, and echoing doom. The stairs headed down into darkness. Well, this is a tomb, after all. I looked around, sighed, and headed in. Sofia’s grin of excitement was encouraging, at least.